


Anoint

by Jo Lasalle (Jo_Lasalle)



Series: Five Ways Lee Adama Never Met Laura Roslin [3]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-23
Updated: 2005-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_Lasalle/pseuds/Jo%20Lasalle
Summary: Lee has always had a purpose.(Part of a number of stories re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones! I tried to time a bulk upload so nobody got 10 separate notifications, but if I did accidentally spam people, my apologies!)
Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Laura Roslin
Series: Five Ways Lee Adama Never Met Laura Roslin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039657





	Anoint

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a "Five Ways" series - five AU first meetings between Laura Roslin and Lee Adama. 
> 
> Re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones.

"You realise you have absolutely no idea of where we're going, right?" The way Elin slouches in the pilot's chair, she's due for serious back pain before the end of the day, but he's had to comment on her course settings twice already and hears the defensiveness in her voice, so Lee chooses to stick to the lessons she'll take when she's like this and lose the non-essentials.

She's tense in the shoulders, her right hand cramped around the speed control. Lee leans over the side of her chair to point to the starboard console. His own back hurts from standing like this, squeezing in close enough to check her controls; the cockpit wasn't designed for teaching. "See that funny string of numbers over there?" he asks, smiling at her because it'll make her roll her eyes, and she'll relax, knowing he's not really disappointed by her performance. "That's the course we set. The one we at least _try_ to stick to?"

She gestures dismissively with her free hand, but he sees the flicker of her eyes to her course controls. "I'm just saying, the whole pedantic nitpicky thing would be a lot more convincing if we weren't flying around at random." But she makes the changes, a little hesitant now after her earlier miscalculation.

"Well, you can go and mock me for it later with all your friends," he says. "Right now I'd like you to focus on not flying us into that sun."

She freezes, and then does a frantic double-check, and when she looks up again her cheeks are a bright red. "That's a couple of hundred clicks away," she says, glowering because she's embarrassed by her mistake.

"Your drift compensation wasn't clean," he replies calmly, checking her adjustments. No need to add that it matters, because she knows. He's tempted to tell her she'll make a good pilot if she doesn't give herself a stroke first, but then he decides to save that for another time.

"Looks good," he says lightly. "I'll see you at dinner then."

Her head whips around. "Wait, you're just _leaving_?"

"I am indeed." He pats the high back of the seat for show and makes a pointedly reassuring face. "Try not to crash the ship."

"Hey!" she calls after him. "Lee!" The hatch to the cockpit is always open and when he doesn't hear her anymore in the small octagonal room right underneath the access tube, he figures she's taken to panicking in silence.

Darren, who's due for the next shift up there, is sitting on the bench that goes all along the wall, a worn newspaper in his hand. Raising his eyebrows at Lee's entrance, he puts down the paper with great care, finished with a crossword puzzle that at least ten people have done before him. "You left her alone?" he asks in a low voice, a reserved smile tugging at his mouth.

"Just for a few minutes. I knew you were probably down here." Darren is the only person on board who actually spends time in this windowless, gloomy excuse for a flight prep room. Not much peace and quiet to be had anywhere else on the ship, of course.

"I like being early," Darren says smoothly, and Lee shakes his head.

"I was going to check up on her in a while, but..." He nods towards the access tube in question.

"No problem. I'll make sure she's okay."

"Thanks. She's doing well."

"I know. She keeps improving, I'll have to fear for my job," Darren says, eyes dramatically wide.

"Don't worry. We'll let you hang out here anyway."

Darren thanks him with a mock little bow, and Lee snorts, but he's glad he can safely leave it in Darren's hands for a little while, and they'll stay on course.

"Hey, before you came up here, did you see Laura?" he asks before he turns to go.

Darren's expression turns pained. "Yes, she went down to the circus," he says, and it doesn't sound like she went down to the second, larger mess for a meal.

"Anything up?" There are several possibilities; Lee can picture them all.

"That's partly why I'm up here," Darren answers with a sigh. "Something or other about the food distribution has crawled up someone or other's backside..." A quick wave of his hand summarises his lack of interest. "She's handling it," he adds, as if Lee would be alarmed.

Of course she is.

"I know," Lee says, and smiles.

~*~*~*

There were bodies further down. Then only cars, sturdy little trucks, suited to the mountainous terrain, abandoned at both sides of the forest road, no way of telling whether their passengers had known which way was safety. Lee never dwelled on it.

Traces of human life thinned out the higher he drove, no clear idea of where he was going, his eyes hurting from the strange light, and there was irony in that, searching for survivors of humanity in the places most removed from human habitation.

Irony, and something else that crawled cold and unnerving over his skin when he found the hotel, the only building for miles and yet small against a sky that was grey and dirty with destruction.

Let that not be an empty corpse, he thought, staring at it through the ashes on his windscreen for a cowardly moment. Let that not yield burnt bodies, let it not all be for nothing.

~*~*~*

Deep in the belly of this poorly-designed ship, the larger mess hall used to be for enlisted personnel. Most of them eat there, but they don't do communal meals. With its emphasis on functionality, it has all the charm of an oversized sink. As he's climbing down the ladder he hears agitated voices, their tinny echoes off the metal walls interrupted by silences; that's when she's speaking.

In front of the door, he considers turning around, because it's not like he's needed. Food issues, he can guess what that's about, the size of the daily rations and the port storage compartment that's in lockdown because the airlock between there and the main body of the ship is down. They've had this debate, over and over, and funnily enough it got worse the further the repairs came along: rely on the supplies they'll find in there, or tighten up the rations? Who would have expected crew protests over rations being too generous.

"How about you calm down first," Laura says quietly, and Lee steps inside just as Zephris Alan is about to shoot off another angry reply. Six people, and her; she's leaning against the narrow end of one of the long, dark-grey tables, her hands propped up on the metal edge. A tiny smile in his direction, or rather the kind that lets him know she _would_ smile if she weren't busy with this nonsense.

Six people are scattered around the room, all of them either standing or sitting on tables rather than the metal chairs. Lee feels their heightened tension, eyes that are not sure where to look to for a final word, but he passes Laura and pulls out a seat for himself at her back, saying nothing.

"I don't think we should let this escalate," she says when Zephris opens his mouth again. He's a tall, usually quiet man, a nuisance with his detail-laden worries and scenarios; Lee doesn't recall hearing him yell before, and she's unusually sharp with him. "I _don't_ want you walking around the ship accusing people left and right, do you understand?"

"It was _theft_ \--"

Lee watches him carefully. Not the ration business after all? Later on he'll know all about it; better not to look taken off guard now.

"Do you understand?" she repeats, only barely raising her voice. "Otherwise we'll have a ship full of people at each other's throats. That's not going to happen."

"No, of course, I don't want... it's not right," Zephris says, and he looks a little lost. "We're just trying to be more careful, and if anyone on this ship..."

"And I'll see to it that it's cleared up," Laura says; she's close to friendly now, but not so much so as to be insincere. "In the meantime, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We all have things to do that are more important than accusing each other." Her calm nod, the way she holds his eyes, the way she then addresses them all with an even gaze is affirmation. She'll see to it. Now she wants them to go, to remember what's at stake, to keep them on course.

It is done.

~*~*~*

She had them hide in a room off the attic. There were no guns, no attempts at heroism. She just found them the safest place when Lee's heavy vehicle rumbled into the yard, and she stood in front of them when Lee finally found the door, chilled to the bone after walking the deserted corridors.

The silence scared him, and the emptiness of every room. Human life brought to an abrupt halt; an abandoned cleaning cart; a pair of suitcases, neatly placed at the side of a bed; a jacket draped untidily over the back of a chair. The only thing moving was his breath in the cold air.

But he stuck with it, hand on his gun, floor by floor, and in the end he saw the door they'd tried to hide as well as they could between hiking gear and luggage and a coat stand. He didn't breathe when he pushed it open but they did, in gasps and whispers.

She stood in front of them all and she saw him, and she didn't whisper. She told him her name, that they hadn't heard from anyone since the attack, and Lee stood unblinking as feeling returned to his icy fingers.

"Now," she said crisply, and Lee would not have believed it, would not have believed her, Caprica dead around them, a handful of survivors scurried together at her back, except she stood there and she seemed unshakable. "Can you get us out of here, and where do we go?"

~*~*~*

The small captain's quarters are still cold. The heating has been malfunctioning for a week; Aiken said the pipes themselves might be frakked, and there's no telling when they'll get around to fixing it.

Laura is rubbing at her arms; she snatches up the top blanket from the unmade bunk and wraps herself in it before perching on the edge of the desk.

"Is everything all right?" he asks, zipping his jacket up to his chin.

She tilts her head, her hair sliding out from the constraint of the blanket in thick tangles. "Of course," she says, with a questioning little smile. "It was fine."

He walks over and pulls out the chair, sitting down in front of her. "They don't normally yell at you."

"Zephris was pretty upset," she concedes. "You know how they're saving their rations, in case there's nothing in the port storage compartment? Well, it appears that someone took Zephris' and Amy's stash."

Lee frowns at the thought. Hardly a surprise they went ballistic. "That's not good."

"No. It's their business if they're starving themselves, but there really aren't a lot of things people have left and if they start stealing them from each other..." Her look is very stern, directed at problems and people causing problems somewhere past Lee's shoulder.

"You're still sure about not cutting down."

"Lee." This particular impatience is for him, though. He almost smiles, because he can take it; she needs that from him too, needs disagreement so she can be sure she knows whether she made the right call. "We need to find some way of resupplying ourselves and we're not going to do that while we're going crazy with hunger. We're not winning enough by going down that route."

"We should hear back from the probes in a few days," Lee says, and she nods, exhaling very slowly.

"Good. Let's just hope they send us some good news."

"I'm sure they will." It's a silly sort of optimism, and it brings a slow smile to her face. She nudges the inside of his boot with the tip of her shoe, then leaves her foot there between his.

"How was school today?"

Lee is still thinking about the food, and starvation, and her face that he won't see distorted by hunger.

She's waiting, wanting to discuss something lighter, something that's working out, and he lets it go.

"Not too bad," he says, not hiding how pleased he is with Elin. "She's getting there. Not long and she can handle it all on her own."

"I'm glad," she says, smiling for real now. "It'll be good to have another pilot on board."

"Are you saying I'm not up to the job?" he asks, putting on very mild outrage.

She flaps a negative in his direction with the corner of the blanket. "I'm just looking out for your best interests. You'd do well with a little more time off."

Lee frowns at her thoughtfully. "Miss Roslin, is this your shady plan to have me at your beck and call?"

She blinks once. "Well," she says then, raising one shoulder elegantly. "We're living in a freezer. What else are we supposed to do?"

~*~*~*

They are twenty-nine. Twenty-nine people, ten storage compartments, three bunkrooms, twelve chairs in the mess, four toilets. Fifty things that can go wrong in a day. One hundred and thirty-one days between them and the day that changed everything. One hundred and thirty-one days that she's steered them safely.

~*~*~*

He's late to arrive at the officers' mess, engine grease still under his fingernails, and Laura gives him a sceptical once-over as he hurries on to the small sink behind the vacant food counter, throwing her an apologetic look.

"Have you eaten at all today?" she calls out across the three rows of empty tables and the sound of running water.

Passably clean, Lee wipes his hands and turns around, meeting her inquisitive eyes as he walks towards her table. "Yes. I stole a pack of dried apples from one of our stockpiling friends." He goes for deadpan for a second, then grins.

"That's not funny."

"No, what's funny is that we're in our fifth month of military rations and you're trying to make sure I eat right."

She gives him a slow, withering stare. "Not to insult your comedic talent, but that's not really funny either."

"Ironic?" he tries. "Please don't say tragic. We can't be all tragic, all the time."

"Shut up. Sit down."

He does. "I'm sorry I'm late," he says, thinking she should have gone ahead without him. It's very late for a meal, and she looks tired. "I got held up in the engine room."

"All fixed now?" But she doesn't complain. She never complains, not about anything she has to shoulder.

"More or less." He clears his throat, shuts down on his disquiet at seeing fatigue written all over her. "So, what have we got?"

It's a fresh container, a week's supply, and she unseals it with critical curiosity.

"Well, there's fish and..." She picks up the top tin, reading the label on the one underneath. "More fish." She pauses, examines the box as if she can't quite believe it. "Well," she says with a sigh. "I'm starting to see the humour of the situation."

Lee wishes they had bread, or something else to soften the taste, but she says nothing, just opens the tin and passes him the second fork.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, hers thoughtful, Lee's single-minded; it's true that he was hungry.

"Aiken says he's almost done fixing the airlock damage," he says eventually, watching her bland expression while she eats the bad food. "We'll be having three course menus in no time." Then he smiles because an oily bit of fish just dropped off her fork and she's frowning disapproval. She tries to pick it up but if falls apart, and the edge of impatience creeps into her attempts to spear it.

"It's been dead for a while," he reminds her earnestly.

She doesn't laugh. She drops her fork and leans back, her face unreadable.

Her silence twists something in him. Lee doesn't mean to, but he reaches out for her hand across the table, and he doesn't care that it makes him look pathetic. After a moment, she gives it to him.

"What would you like?" he asks, against all reason, against his better judgement because it shouldn't be like this, because she deserves better, and he has to clear his throat again. "If you could choose anything, what would you like to have right now?"

But she's never even close to answering, to playing along, to dreaming this sad meal away. She doesn't complain, and she doesn't look away from what is too hard. "There's not much point to wanting things that are impossible," she says, all calm, squeezing his hand, and Lee feels the shadow of her sadness settle on him like a black weight.

No. No point. He draws in a breath, feeling her slender hand in his, so strong, so fragile. Impossible things.

~*~*~*

They don't talk much about their lives, before.

Sometimes Lee sees two or three of their people in the mess, in the stretch of corridor by the large window that's been furnished with storage crates and an old bunk, sitting close together, shrouded in that distinctive hush of reminiscence. Sometimes he hears the pauses and the non sequiturs, happiness pulled out and examined, each time a little more tattered, a little more frail. Conservation of details. It touches him despite its folly.

He makes his steps heavy on the metal floor, announcing his approach, giving Zephris and Doreen time to pull themselves out of the intimacy of their conversation.

"Hey," he says, not sitting down.

Zephris' look is one of contained hostility, but he manages a nod. "Lee."

To the point, Lee holds out the little bundle Laura gave him. "Someone made a mistake," he says. "It won't happen again."

Zephris exchanges an insecure glance with Doreen before he accepts the little stash of dried food. "Is that..."

"It's almost everything. Yours and Amy's. Can you give it to her?"

"Of course," Zephris says instantly. "Who took it?" He's bewildered more than angry, which is good.

"Laura took care of it. It won't happen again." Firm, leaving no room for discussion, for angry claims of punishment.

"I-- thank you. I didn't think you'd actually do anything..." He shrugs, and some of Lee's apprehension disappears at seeing his awkwardness.

"We don't have much left," he says, in a friendlier tone than he usually manages around the man. "I think not taking that from each other ought to be a given." Lee knows why this matters, showing them that they haven't abandoned all order, all justice.

Zephris comes pretty close to a smile. "Okay."

"Now give it a rest with the rations," Lee says with exasperation that's half-serious, half mockery, and Zephris rolls his eyes. "You can knock yourself out saying I told you so when we get to that storage compartment."

He leaves them there, to their memories. He never thinks much about his life, before. There are other details now, and home will be somewhere else.

Sometimes he remembers; people he loved, scenes from another life, before everything blurred together in the death of millions and space was empty, so empty.

Other times he thinks his first memory, the first thing that is sharp, stinging in its clarity, is of opening that door and finding her, and the path she would show them.

~*~*~*

"There's no room," he said to her. He sounded harsh, ungracious, throwing this in her face, but the voice was still in his head, desperate and shaken, and Lee couldn't let it shake him now. There were numbers, logic, necessity. A decision to make. "We don't have the room."

The captain's quarters; she'd come with him at a mere glance, understanding him easily. "This is your ship, Captain," she said. She still called him captain then. Her full attention was on him, and when she didn't flinch, when she took in the truth without evasion it became easier, the echoes of the distress call muffled by her presence.

"I know it's a difficult call," he insisted, because she needed to do this. There was no other way.

Her eyes were wide with seeing the necessity, the stakes shimmering between them. "I'm sure you'll do what you think is best."

"I know it sounds cruel," he said. "It's a horrible thing to do." Such a burden, and as he watched her draw back her shoulders, saw her get ready for it, he feared he might fail her with the wish not to lay it on her.

But he went on. "We don't have the resources to take on even ten more people for any length of time, and that's a ship that's likely to have as many as two hundred passengers. We'd probably have a fight on our hands."

She took a moment to think, to breathe; it would be all right. "We can't afford that," she said quietly.

"No, we can't. It'll get all of us killed along with them, and that call has to be made now, before we enter their visual range."

Finally, she nodded, and Lee saw that it was decided.

She didn't need a polite lie from him, assurance that someone else would respond to the signal, someone else would save those people. She'd wear the burden of their deaths. She had her own people here, and she was keeping them safe, taking care of them.

She sent him away with the silent order, the terrible choice, and Lee went to alter their course.

~*~*~*

The meeting concludes uneventfully. They come to the larger mess once a week, and every subject is fair game, and nothing is ever talked about that matters. People corner Laura in between, or sometimes Lee, and Laura opens each meeting with an earnestness that Lee has to smile at, knowing she's secretly rolling her eyes. But she insists on having these little gatherings; it's good for the ship, she says, good for cohesion and for letting them know they're being taken seriously, and who is Lee to argue.

He sees her point, too. There is a quiet rhythm at work, reassurance that goes both ways; a little tension in the room today because Laura has no news for them on the supply situation, but Zephris is quiet and conciliatory, and it seems that nobody has blabbed about the stolen food.

Low chatter rises as they file out, the obligatory few lurking by the door, pretending to be slow because they want a word. Doreen this time, and two others she's friends with; Lee guesses they're for moral support.

Laura's eyes are on Hethren, not too long, not so anyone would notice, but the girl feels her as she's sneaking out with her shoulders hunched, making a concentrated effort not to turn around.

So it had been her. Laura doesn't look at him, doesn't clue him in by anything but the arrested little nod to herself before she turns to Doreen, smiling. That's all right, too. She handled it.

~*~*~*

"We can't go back," she said, that one time things got heated. Furious dissent was all around her and between her and Lee, who'd taken far too long to get down to the central corridor where the argument had erupted.

"We have to look for survivors," Darren said, sharp and forceful, and very tall standing in front of her. "That message--"

"Was automated." She had to raise her voice and it sounded strained, nervous even, like they had caught her unprepared, and Lee pushed a little too roughly between the couple blocking his way because it had caught him unprepared, too.

"We've been on Caprica, there's no reason to assume _anyone_ is still alive down there," she soldiered on, and then she saw Lee and her face slipped, seemed to say _finally_ , and Lee's stomach was all in knots with the thought that she'd been genuinely fearful. She caught herself, though. "The radiation alone--"

"You don't know that," someone said, which was dumb and meant nothing, and at the same time someone asked, "Why do you get to decide that?" And that meant everything, and she was very still, thinking fast under the surface of her control, teetering on the edge, the good answer that would tip the balance elusive.

"Lee," she started, not as sure as he thought she'd be but he was there now, at her side; a subtle shift back when he looked at them all, calm and determined, answering for her, standing at her side, at her back; it was enough.

"There's nothing left there," he said, not even angry, but cold in his lack of compromise. Their path doesn't lead them back. "We won't go on a suicide run because you're feeling nostalgic."

Silence then, and the pressure dwindling, a deep breath here and a step back there, and then she said something soothing, just the right thing that Lee never would have thought of.

So even that had been easy.

~*~*~*

She is huddled into the corner of the bunk, two layers of blankets around her, and still her face is grey. Even the way she rubs at her fingers for warmth looks slow and tired.

"Are you sure you want to leave her alone up there?" she asks, a tiny quirk to her mouth, and Lee doesn't know what to do with that, why he'd think about the cockpit right now. "You look a little nervous."

Ah. He takes a slow breath, fakes a shrug. "Elin's doing fine. You said it; good for me to get more time off." Sitting down, he starts unlacing his boots. The floor is cold when he stands up again, the entire room is cold, so of course she'd have the blankets pulled up to her chin; it means nothing else.

"I was a little dizzy," she says somewhat pointedly when he meets her gaze. Then she leans her head against the wall, but still keeps her eyes on him. "I don't know what they told you, but if it involved the word 'faint' they were lying."

"Are you feeling better?"

Something flickers across her face, some kind of hesitation. But what she says is, "I'm fine," and she gives him a smile because he sounded so worried. He looks away, swallowing hard.

The chill is instant when he loses the jacket, walks over in the cool air of their unheated quarters. Untangling the blankets, she sits up, makes room for him to edge in and shift until he's between her and the wall, so she can lean against his body.

"You can't sleep like that," she says, slowly settling her weight against him.

"I'm not tired."

She holds still while he arranges the blanket around them, and then she pulls his arms around her, her hands on his wrists. But he knows what she feels like when she softens, when her body goes lax and melts against him and she's all warmth in his embrace, free from her burdens for however long they have.

There are things on her mind.

"That's her first night shift all on her own," she says.

"Yes." He remains motionless as she draws up her knees, tucks one cold foot under his leg. Slowly, she turns her hand palm up, and he vaguely traces the lines there with two fingers. "What's wrong?"

She stills; she's thinking. Then her shoulders come down with a quiet sigh, and she takes hold of his hand. There's a tilt to her head, away from his face. "I have a confession to make," she says; it sounds like teasing, but brittle underneath. "I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Yes, you are," he whispers without thinking, without doubt. His arms tighten and he breathes in the scent of her hair, and mouthes the words again. Yes, you are.

"Lee," she says, with a quiet, sad laugh that tears at him.

"No." He shakes his head, which she can feel and there's a sigh, the edge of impatience.

"What I'm trying to tell you..." Her hand closes around his fingers, but then she lets go again, makes herself ease up and her voice is easy, too, floating; it makes him shiver. "I was scheduled for an event, off planet. But I bailed on it. Drove into the mountains, to that place I used to stay at. Where you found us."

He's still touching her, his fingertips at the base of her thumb, right above her pulse. The lines on her palm deepen as he follows them, and he concentrates on that, her soft skin and the way she lets him touch her while the looming shadow presses down on him, makes his voice small and fractured.

"Why?"

She sighs, waits, like she'd rather spare him, her face still turned away, and he closes his eyes, pulls her tighter because he knows. "I had a doctor's appointment that morning."

He doesn't fight it. Doesn't deny. He knows. He's always known.

~*~*~*

It was weeks into their journey that he first kissed her. A long day, their hardest yet; hardest on her because one of her people had died of a simple illness, and she sat alone in the officers' mess, helplessness written into the bend of her back and every line on her face. He knelt down in front of her with what little comfort he had, helpless himself because this was part of it, too, and he couldn't lift it off her.

"There was nothing you could do," he said, and she nodded, she knew that, and she was a little weak when she slumped against him, but he could hold her up. There with his knees hurting from the metal floor she accepted his strength, and after a while she drew back and just looked at him, hesitant, and then he dared touch her face, brought a smile to it, and when he raised himself up to her it was tentative and careful but never odd, never strained; it was fitting.

~*~*~*

"Two for the price of one." Elin's grin is wide, her sprawl in the pilot's chair proud and proprietary. "Not bad."

"That's a choice I don't mind having," Darren agrees, going over the probe data again even though the most important facts have burned themselves into their minds. Two planets, only a few jumps away, habitable each, the promise of fresh supplies and an end to scarcity. The ship is happy today.

Lee leaves the cockpit smiling, the summary reports in one hand. It's numbers and dry survey language, but he knows how it translates, can picture mountainous terrain and glowing sunsets, a world that's alive.

Her face lights up when he finds her outside their quarters. "That's terrific news," she says, and he nods and pulls her into an embrace that makes her laugh. It's a rare sound and it gives him pause, the joy of the moment sharpened by a distant ache.

"So, where are we going?" she says, stepping into their quarters while holding on to his hand. He follows gladly. "I hear both would be viable options."

"Yes, they are," he says, taking in her happiness, and he holds the reports out to her with a deep sense of rightness. "Pick one."

"What?" she asks, laughing again, and he wants to pull her back to him, wants to feel the strength that optimism has filled her with. "I don't understand half of what's in them; you know that."

"They're both saying the same." He takes one of her hands, dry and rough from this life they have left, and presses a kiss to sharp knuckles. "Go on," he says, with a smile. "Pick one. You have the better hand at this." And she looks at him curiously, a little puzzled, but eventually she turns her eyes to the sky and flicks the edge of the first report with one finger.

"There. That one. Happy?"

He's still smiling, his throat tight with how much he doesn't want her to ever move out of that confident, unflinching stance. "Yes."

~*~*~*

It really is as beautiful.

They've reached a clearing where the ground drops gently, through forest that's not too thick for a comfortable walk, and she's beautiful, too, breathing in the fresh air, surveying the land around them.

"I don't know," she says, considering. "That's a lot of random green. Think this will serve our needs?"

Beautiful, yes, but it feels like dusk, like the sky is very close and Lee wants to be happier, knows he has no reason to feel it like a burden when he should be feeling relief. It will be all right. "I'm sure."

"We shouldn't get lost," she says, looking doubtfully over her shoulder.

"We're not lost," he says, because she needs to hear it, because he needs to believe it, and slips his hand into hers. "You led us here."

He's done everything so she could. Fulfilled his duty, so she could hers, and it brought them here. He has to remember that it's all right like this.

She looks at him with a mildly raised eyebrow, disbelieving, and Lee thinks that's wrong because it's obvious, it's the way things are.

"What's this about?"

Her hold on his hand is distracted, and his fingers ache when he lets her go. "I love you."

She gives him a pointed look, not quite amused, and then she frowns into the distance, at the mountains she'll only see from afar. "That's not an answer."

He watches as she prods the ground with her shoe, preoccupied perhaps with feeling soft soil again, and his voice splinters on his own weakness. "It should be."

And it would be better if he were stronger; better if it could be just the two of them, if her eyes didn't widen in shock as she sees Lee step onto the clearing, if she didn't have to be frozen and afraid as Lee comes towards her, if she believed that he loved her even as he steps away.

He watches, because she always faced everything too; he watches her stagger and cannot catch her, and he feels her frightened resistance against the other's body and he feels the strain of her neck in the fingers around her throat, and they're less gentle than he thought they would be.

She struggles; of course she does, but in this it is to no avail. In this, she is weak. Leader, not fighter, and he feels that too, the lack of air and the fear, and why would he feel her like this, it's impossible, but he wants the impossible, wants to cheat for her, wants her to see the new land, wants her to lead them all the way to the end.

But all of this has happened before. Her end is here, as is his part in this, ordained by words and a will older than time, so much more important than what he feels and how he breaks.

She is laid down, broken and beautiful on the ground of Kobol, to be revered by all and generations to come. Hallowed in her sacrifice; no longer his to touch.


End file.
